Olight Perun 3 Mini Cool White Headlamp Review

The Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp has high output as well as a secondary red emitter. The headband and switch are greatly updated! Read on!

Official Specs and Features

Here’s a referral link to the Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp product page.

Versions

At least two body color versions are available: black (seen here) and orange. Black is available in both cool white (seen here) and neutral white with high CRI! Both are available as seen in this post or as a kit, which includes the “wireless charging case.”

Price

As seen here, the Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp is $64.99. The kit is more pricey, at $94.99.

Olight Sale – Happening Now!

Below are a bunch of deals going on now in Olight’s Summer Bash. These are all referral links!

What’s Included

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp
Olight “Customized” 650mAh 16340
Olight headband
Charge cable (USB to proprietary magnetic) (1A max)
Manual

Package and Manual

Build Quality and Disassembly

The build quality is good as you’d expect. The light feels smooth in the hand, and the body provides adequate grip for unscrewing the body.

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp showing all sides

The head has deep cooling fins. I’m happy that Olight went with the introductory version that includes orange. Sometimes orange only comes later. I didn’t get orange, but I’ll forgive that. 😉

The head unscrews from the body, and that’s the extent of the parts. The head end has a short spring and a rubber gasket. That gasket more or less prevents the cell from being installed incorrectly. What’s inside the tail there are contacts for both positive and negative, and they are springy.

Size and Comps

Flashlight: 2.53 x 0.87 x 0.81 in (64.3 x 22 x 20.6 mm)
Perun 3 Mini Standard: 1.9 oz / 54g (Battery Included)

(Essentially unchanged from the Perun 2 Mini.)

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp on a two dollar bill

If the flashlight can headstand, I’ll show it here. If it can tailstand, I’ll also show that here!

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp in hand

Here’s the test light with the venerable Convoy S2+. The version below is a custom laser-engraved Convoy S2+ host by GadgetConnections.com. I did a full post on an engraved orange host right here! Or go straight to GadgetConnections.com to buy your Convoy S2+ now!

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp with two standard sized flashlights

Also in the photo above, my Standard Reference Material (SRM) flashlight is the Hanko Machine Works Trident, an 18350 light. While I have not reviewed or tested the Gunner Grip version seen here, I have tested a Hanko Machine Works Trident Total Tesseract in brass. I love the Trident, and it’s a striking contrast to the inexpensive Convoy S2+, another great SRM.

Retention and Carry

Since it ships attached to the light, let’s talk about the pocket clip first. This clip is a fairly standard friction-fit clip and is not two-way as was on the Perun 2 Mini. There’s a reason for that! Read on!

I like this clip for the usual use case anyway. Two-way clips don’t do anything special for me. Below you can also see that there’s a hole where a (very thin) lanyard could be attached, too!

The magnet in the base, which is used for charging, is perfectly sufficient to retain the light in multiple positions.

The headband connector is updated. Notably, the pocket clip is used for connecting the Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp to the headband. And you must connect it this way! There is no other way!

There’s a little release button for freeing the headlamp from this connector.

There’s a bit of grip on the back of the stretchy headband. And there’s no over-the-top strap. The Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp is light enough that it’s not really needed.

To secure the Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp to the connector, you lever part of the clip into one end, and click the other end of the pocket clip into the “release button area.” It’s very straightforward and I love it! Just don’t lose or damage your pocket clip.

Power and Runtime

Olight includes the cell required for the Perun 3 Mini. It’s a “customized” 16340, with a stated capacity of 650mAh. “Customized” in this case means the positive is in the usual place, but there’s a ring of negative surrounding that.

The cell goes into the Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp in the usual way – positive end toward the head. (I believe this is an update from the Perun 2 Mini!)

Here are a number of runtimes.

The Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp does have built-in low voltage protection and shuts off at around 3V or so.

Charging

The light has built-in charging as well. Included is a cable – USB to magnetic connector. This one is the “MCC 1A” and that’s important since there are many versions that look just about the same.

The charger snaps very cleanly to the light, and the light will sit upright on the base, too.

Here’s a charge graph. Charging is consistent, and somewhere over 1C.

Modes and Currents

Mode	Mode Claimed Output (lm)	Claimed Runtime	Measured Lumens	Tailcap Amps
Turbo	1250/350	2m/60m	1188 (0s) 1128 (30s)	3.33
High	500/350	2m/75m	473	0.79
Medium	100	4.5h	100	144.7mA
Low	10	30h	12.7	20.8mA
Moon	2	10d	1.9	3.2mA
Red	40	150m	41	252.0mA
Red	5	19h	5	33.2mA

Pulse Width Modulation

No PWM on any mode. Yay! These are sort of squiggles, but not actual PWM.

Click here to see a “baseline” – a chart with almost no light hitting the sensor.

Then there’s the Ultrafire WF-602C flashlight, which has some of the worst PWM I’ve seen. It’s so bad that I used a post about it to explain PWM! Here are multiple timescales (10ms, 5ms, 2ms, 1ms, 0.5ms, 0.2ms) to make comparing this “worst” PWM light to the test light easier. That post also explains why I didn’t test the WF-602C at the usual 50us scale.

User Interface and Operation

The Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp uses a single e-switch on the head. It’s a big flat switch, has been updated to be a more flat and metal switch! I like it quite a lot. It is not the least bit proud, which allows the light to headstand. The Perun 3 Mini is not quite perfectly vertical when headstanding, but it works fine.

The switch is also just the least bit clicky. I had some complaints about the direction of the press on the older Perun Mini, but this one seems just fine. (For the record, the switches don’t feel all that different.)

This switch cover is larger than that on the Perun Mini, and that’s a nice advance. The switch also has an indicating dot, which you can see below. It’s subtle, and you won’t notice it except when it’s on.

Here’s a user interface table! I believe this to be exactly the same user interface that the Perun 2 Mini has.

State	Action	Result
Off	Click	On in Mode Memory (Moon, LMH only. Turbo is memorized as High and high is memorized as medium if on for >1m)
Off	Hold	Moon
On	Double Click	Turbo
On	Hold	Mode advance (Moon, LMH only)
Turbo	Double Click	Exit Turbo to previous mode (except if previous was high, then results in Medium)
Off	Double Click	Red
Red	Hold	Red advance: Red Low > Red High > Red SOS
SOS	Click	Off
On	Click	Off
On (White only)	Click and Hold (quickly)	Timer (Single blink: 3 minutes, Double blink: 9 minutes)
Timer	Click and Hold (quickly)	Switch between 3 and 9 minute timers.
Off	Hold (>2s)	Lockout
Lockout	Hold (~2s)	Unlock (and goes to Moonlight)

The switch indicating feature does tell the battery capacity level, too. It does this for a few seconds when the light is turned on. It indicates as follows:

Green: >60%
Orange: 10-60%
Red: 5-10%
Red Blinking: <5%

In moonlight mode, the switch will only indicate if power is below 5%, in which case it blinks red (so consistent with the above power metrics, but only the “<5%” indicator).

LED and Beam

The emitter in this light is unspecified. I believe the emitter used in this Perun 3 Mini is an Osram P9. It’s stated as cool white, at least. The light also uses a TIR. There are two red emitters, which you can see below above and below the main white emitter.

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp emitter on

Olight Perun 3 Mini High CRI headlamp emitters on

LED Color Report (CRI and CCT)

The Perun 3 Mini output is around 6000K and has low CRI.

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp CRI and CCT reports

CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) refers to the measurement of the color appearance of light, expressed in Kelvins (K), which indicates whether the light is warm (yellowish) or cool (bluish). A lower CCT (below 3000K) is considered warm light, while a higher CCT (above 5000K) gives cooler, bluish light.

CRI (Color Rendering Index) is a measure of how accurately a light source renders colors in comparison to natural sunlight. Scored on a scale from 0 to 100, higher CRI values indicate that colors appear more true to life and vibrant, similar to how they would look under the sun.

Beamshots

These beamshots always have the following settings: f8, ISO100, 0.3s shutter, and manual 5000K exposure. These photos are taken at floor level, and the beam hits the ceiling around 9 feet away.

Tint vs BLF-348 (KillzoneFlashlights.com 219b version) (affiliate link)

I keep the test flashlight on the left and the BLF-348 reference flashlight on the right. These photos are taken around 18 inches from the door.

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp beamshots on door (at 1') compared to nichia 219b 4500K

I compare everything to the KillzoneFlashlights.com 219b BLF-348 because it’s inexpensive and has the best tint!

Summary and Conclusion

Previous iterations of the Olight Perun Mini have been good, and this Perun 3 Mini is very good too! I appreciate the novel and updated headband connection – it’s very quick! Olight offering two distinct emitter options is great too – this higher output cool white version and a warmer white high CRI version, too. The user interface is still great and red is useful (I think they even added one level of red on this version!

The Big Table

Olight Perun 3 Mini cool white headlamp
Emitter:	(Cool White)
Price in USD at publication time:	$64.99
Cell:	1×16340
Runtime Graphs
LVP?	Yes
Switch Type:	E-Switch
Quiescent Current (mA):	?
On-Board Charging?	Yes
Charge Port Type:	Proprietary magnetic
Charge Graph
Power off Charge Port
Claimed Lumens (lm)	1250
Measured Lumens (at 30s)	1128 (90.2% of claim)^
Candela per Lumen	6.19
Claimed Throw (m)	155
Candela (Calculated) in cd (at 30s)	302lux @ 4.961m = 7433cd
Throw (Calculated) (m)	172.4 (111.2% of claim)^
Claimed CCT	5700-6700K
Measured CCT Range (K)	6000-6400 Kelvin
Item provided for review by:	Olight
All my Olight reviews!

^ Measurement disclaimer: Testing flashlights is my hobby. I use hobbyist-level equipment for testing, including some I made myself. Try not to get buried in the details of manufacturer specifications versus measurements recorded here; A certain amount of difference (say, 10 or 15%) is perfectly reasonable.

What I like

Great headband connection
Added one level of red
Great performance
Excellent build quality

What I don’t like

Low CRI
Proprietary 16340

Notes

This content originally appeared at zeroair.org. Please visit there for the best experience!
Please use my Amazon.com referral link to help support zeroair.org!
Please support me on Patreon! I deeply appreciate your support!